Twelve years ago, Eugenia Kuyda pitched a chatbot named IO at TechCrunch Disrupt, envisioning an AI assistant that could book restaurants and vacations. Now, she’s launched Wabi, a multiplayer personal AI assistant that’s set to transform how we interact with technology and each other.

Wabi offers a unique twist on the single-threaded AI experiences of rivals like Instinct and Muse. It functions as a messenger app, allowing users to maintain multiple dedicated threads for various tasks and long-term goals. Within each thread, users can build and use custom apps, such as a weight-loss tracker or a family event finder.

Kuyda believes that the future lies in shared AI experiences. ‘It’s not just everything in one single thread like with Instinct and Muse, where you get buried in the information that it sends you every day,’ she said. ‘Single thread experiences, if you think about it, get worse over time because it’s just so much context in one endless conversation.’

Wabi’s approach to privacy and data security is robust. ‘My previous company Replika worked on AI that will make people feel less lonely,’ Kuyda said. ‘To a degree, that is also the case with Wabi. AI can bring people together, even when it comes to just helping you spend time better together in real life, whether it’s going out and seeing a concert together or finding the next book that you will read together.’

Wabi is free for now, and the company hasn’t settled on a business model yet. Kuyda is in talks to raise more funds to continue developing this innovative approach to AI.